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Posts Tagged “feedburner”

Now that you have recorded your podcast, it is time to post it so everyone can listen and/or download it.

There are several choices when you are posting your podcast. Do you want to host the file on your hosting provider or do you want to put the files somewhere else. I’ll start with putting them in the same place as your blog. You simply create a directory/folder on your FTP server (you should have a tool to do this already, I use FileZilla). Then you FTP the files to that folder. When you create your blog post about the podcast you will need a link to the file, in order for Feedburner to recognize the location of the media file. If you are using WordPress, there is a great plugin called Podpress. Once you have this installed, it adds an on line player and several other features that make it easy to add podcasts. I use this plugin and you can see what it looks like on these 2 posts.

You’ll notice a couple of features. One is that you can color code the player to match the colors of your web site. Two, it gives the user the choice of playing it online or downloading it and listen on their PC.

You can alsoÂ haveÂ your podcasts hosted on another provider. The choice among podcasters for this is Libsyn. They have several packages available. The big benefit, is that they charge you for storage space and not the bandwidth when your podcasts are downloaded.

When you have everything loaded up, it’s time to tell the world. Similar to pinging search engines about a new blog post, you would do the same thing with your podcasts. Obviously the most popular podcast site is iTunes. In order to get your podcast on their directory you will need an iTunes account. For this you will need a credit card, even if you never plan on buying anything from their store. Once you have your account, you load up iTunes, go to the Store, select Podcasts from the upper left box, then submit a Podcast from the lower left box. From there you follow the prompts of where you feed is and what your podcast is about etc. When you submit a podcast the first time, it will take 24-48 hours to get a response back with your podcast account number. You can take that number and put it into the form on Podpress, or you can save the link for future reference. There are a few ways of adding a button to your site that allows people to subscribe to your podcast. The first way is to use that link that was sent to you and attach it to a button. There are, however, some watch-outs to be aware of when using this method. If you have a podcast that comes out more frequently than once a week, you will want to use the methods below to link to your iTunes button. Sometimes it can take days before iTunes will update your podcasts on their store. So I recommend you use one of the following methods to attach to the iTunes button on your site. (assuming your are using Feedburner). You can use either the itpc://feeds.feedburner/[your feed name] or pcast://feeds.feedburner/[your feed name].

There are several podcast specific directories you should use to list your podcasts.

Now that you have your site set up with the proper RSS feed that supports media files via Feedburner, you are ready to record. Of course you have gone through the planning of what your podcast will be about, who the target audience is, how long your podcast will be and the frequency of the podcast.

When you start out podcasting you may not know how long or how often you are going to podcast. From the feedback at Podcamp Toronto I would say to keep your podcast under 30 minutes. As for how often, that really depends on how much information you audience can handle and the big question… will you run out of things to say? The other part of how often is to be consistent. If you start a weekly podcast and skip a couple of weeks, some might think you stopped doing podcasts. Donna Popacosta mentioned the important thing is keep your listeners informed. So if you are going to take a month off to travel, let your listeners know in the podcasts before you leave.

So now you’re ready to record. One of the great lines I heard at Podcamp was “anything worth recording is worth recording badly”. The context of this was that you didn’t have to spend a fortune on equipment to start recording. Some podcasters started with just their laptop, as it had a build in microphone. When you are ready to start spending some money, it was unanimous to spend your money on your microphone. Look to spend $50-$200 for a good quality mic. This will make a big difference to your recordings. The type of mic. used by many is a condenser microphone, which will need an external power source. (look for mixers that have a “phantom power source” for these type of microphones).

Some of the suggested products were:

M-Audio Podcast Factory. This is a good starter setup. It comes with a dynamic microphone, a mini USB mixer and software to record and publish your podcast.

A step up from there were several microphone suggestions.

MXL 990 is a condenser microphone for under $100 and it comes with its own stand and hard sided case.

There are hundreds of other choices from AKG, or Rode. One of the best sources for products is ebay.

There are a few favorites for recording and editing your software. First, there is Audacity. This software is free and is a good starting point. It allows you to have multiple inputs (more than one channel). It also makes it easier to add music or other recorded materials to your podcast.

The next step up from Audacity is Adobe’s Audition or CUBASE. Both are professional level recorders and editors. Audition recently released version 2.0 of their product. (I have heard there are issues with Audition with Windows Vista). The good news about this release is that you can probably get some good deals on the previous version 1.5 which is still a very capable editor. For a demonstration of how to edit your recordings. You can download Mark Blevis’ .mov file here.

If you are a beginner and are using Audacity. There is another piece of free software I use. It is called Levelator from Gigavox. Through a series of algorithms it normalizes and/or compresses your recording; but it does it all automatically. For explanations of these and other terms, you can watch Jay Moonah’s presentation by downloading here.

Some of you may want to record more than just one person, or do interviews on the phone. The best method I have heard for doing this is with Skype. Skype is a free software download that allows you to talk to anyone else with Skype for free. I have several posts below about Skype. What you need to know for podcasting is how to record Skype. There are many choices for this. There is one thing you should look for in this software. As you progress in your editing knowledge, you will want to have your voice and the other’s voice on separate channels. This will allow you to add some effects to the other voice to correct any issues. The 2 packages I am aware of with this feature are Powergrammo (paid version does 2 channels), and PrettyMay. Other Skype recording software is Pamela, HotRecorder and Skyperecorder.

In Jay Moonah’s presentation above, they also discussed a “double-ender” This is where both sides use the software above to record their voice. Then your interviewee sends you the file. You match the 2 files up in your editor and you have a pristine sounding recording, almost as if the 2 of you were in the same room.

The next step up, from a hardware point of view is to a mixer. 2 of the most popular are the Alesis Mulitimix 8USB or the Behringer UB802. If you are looking for something portable. Belkin has their Tune Studio mixer that uses an iPod as the recording device.

One last point about the recording. When you make your recording, always choose to record in a .wav format. This is uncompressed and will be the best sounding format. When you have completed all of your edits. Then you can convert to .mp3 to post onto sites.

And…this is where this post ends, and the next post will be Podcasting 101: posting your podcast on web sites and directories, including iTunes.

Â This is the first in a series of posts to explain how to start podcasting 101. This is the pre-post about the things you need to do before you start podcasting. I recently attended Podcamp Toronto. This was a fantastic event where 300 people got together to share their knowledge and experience about podcasting.

The key phrase is web presence. You could have the greatest podcast on earth, but if you don’t have a presence, then no one will be able to find it, or you for that matter. Julien Smith was one of the speakers at Podcamp Toronto. He gave a fantastic presentation on Giving Your Podcast A Google Presence. You can download the video (80 MB) here. Julien make some tremendous points about Google and podcasting. Basically, Google couldn’t care less if you have a podcast. Google knows text…not audio. In order to help Google out, you need to start with a blog, or a web site. You should put the podcast notes on your site and/or get a transcript done. This will help Google when it searches you site.

Your Own Domain:

First, decide on a domain name. I could spend a post or two about how to choose a name, but Bill Sweetman gave a great presentation (40MB) about this at Podcamp. Once you have a name picked out and you have registered the domain; find yourself a good web hosting service. I reccommend this over any of the free services from Blogger, or WordPress. I have seen too many people who have lost their blogs because of some technical issue. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a Blogger blog, or WordPress blog. Both offer their software for free to put on any web hosting service you use. This blog uses WordPress software and my hosting service is 1 & 1. Neither of the steps are expensive. To register a domain costs about $10 a year and a basic web or blog hosting service can be as low as $5 a month.

RSS Feed:

Next you need to create a feed. RSS is a standard format (XML) text file that allows many other readers see your posts. Now most blogging software will create an RSS feed. However, Feedburner.comÂ will allow you to publicize your feed and add several extra features at the click of a button. For podcasters, the most important feature to turn on is the SmartCast feature in the Optimize tab. This will automatically add the tags required to put your podcast on iTunes and add media tags when you post an mp3 file to your site.

Ping’s The Thing:

Once you have created somthing new for your site. You need to tell the world that it is there. The easiest way to do this is tell all the search engines, blog directories and podcast directories that you have created something new. Pingoat is a great service to do this. Once you have filled out your sites information you should add the site to your links group in your browser. Then all you have to do is click on the button in your browser and Pingoat will start telling all the services that you have new content.

Of course to help Google to search your site, you should have a site map. There is a WordPress addin that will create the site map and ping Google to come and search your site. You can download here.

Tags:

Tags are keywords that will help others to find your posts or podcasts. Technorati is the largest and most popular site for tag searching. You will need to “claim” you blog on their site. Once that is done, you can add some tags in the profile page to help others find your blog and podcasts. You should also tag your posts. You can see my Technorati tags below next to the green icon. Most blogging platforms support Technorati tags. For WordPress there is a plugin called Ultimate Tag Warrior. This adds an entry bar right under the posting page to add your tags. It also allows you to list related posts from your blog. This helps people to find your other posts on the same topic. Lorelle gives a great tutorial on using Tag Warrior in this post.

Now you’re ready to start recording! In the next few posts I will discuss the various hardware and software required to start your first podcast. Plus, how to post it on iTunes and other services so the World can subscibe to you. As always, if you have any questions, just send me an email or leave a comment.

Not that I mind you checking back every day to see if I have a new post. I have a new feature that will email you the new posts as they are created. See the Subcribe Me button in the sidebar to the right. Add your email and you will be the posts each time they are added.Â